


Loaded

by orphan_account



Category: American Gods (TV), American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: 1960s, A sexy bixseual leprechaun and a sexy bisexual ex con walk into a bar, Bi-Curiosity, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, Fight Sex, Fire, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Madmoon, Road Trips, Sexy men fight and kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 19:11:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11237397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sweeney and Shadow talk about Sweeney's past.





	Loaded

**Author's Note:**

> A quick warning, there is a suicide at the start of the chapter from an original character in prison. If this isn't good for you skip to the first break in the text. The fic works without it!

 

Shadow found trouble in taking comfort in the chaos that had so quickly taken over his life.

It wasn’t the same kind of controlled chaos that reigned in prison. The chaos in prison ran like clockwork. He knew who to avoid, he knew who to be to avoid dealing with anything. He kept his head down and focused on the dot on the horizon that was his release date. He knew the way to deal with prison was to live outside the present. To live in a bubble so detached from reality, so inside his own head that it passed by him merely like a bad dream. Laura was his end goal, a hot bath, sex and pizza. A prize he had so revered in his head the life he had in prison ran by him, blinkered. Most of his time in prison rushed by him blurred and undetailed, like the shell shock after a blast. Prison fights and alarms blurred past him never interrupting him from his internal focus.

 

Other than one incident. This incident was clear as the air after a storm. On the way from rec time Shadow passed a cell filled with whispering guards, crowed over a limp body. Shadow heard the guard’s radios crackle and hum.

 

“Yeah we’ve got a suicide, cell 54, block D” An elderly guard muttered into the radio receiver with clinical meticulousness. There was no emotion in his voice, the statement was precise and close to callous.

 

From Shadow’s current position he could only see limp legs crossed delicately on the floor of the prison cell. Shadow rolled onto his toes whilst he walked to get a better view. This was the first time he let his curiosity pierce his internal bubble. It was out of character for ‘Prison Shadow’ but the urge to take a morbid peak was too strong. As he passed by the cell he craned his neck to see beyond the wall of guards. Shadow glimpsed the corpse, his body rigid and petrified. His hands were gripped tight around the bottom of a plastic bag sucked tight over his head. The bag was white and was adorned with a bright yellow smiley face with ‘Have a Nice Day’ scrawled beneath it in a childish font. the image of a desperate man clutching and clawing at a terrible mistake seeped into Shadow’s imagination. Shadow realised that without Laura and his prison blinkers he could have easily have felt the same.

 

After that incident, the sickly sweet image of a yellow smiley face was emblazoned into his memory with the association that he couldn’t quite shake, the association of succumbing to the chaos. From that point Shadow kept his head down even harder shutting out everything but his memories and the book of coin tricks Low Key had given him.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Oi fucker, where’d you go?” Sweeney growled whilst tapping a beer mat embellished with the familiar smiley face  on the sticky surface of the bar.

 

“Am I borin’ you?” his voice escalated into a deep roar.

 

Sweeney’s words broke Shadow’s transfixion on the beermat. His dark eyes flickered to meet Sweeney’s, whose eyes were growing wild with frustration or boredom. Shadow couldn’t tell which. Sweeney flicked the beermat at Shadow. The mat slipped clumsily across the bar petering to a stop in front of Shadow.  

 

Shadow grunted and flipped the mat over to the plain side.

 

“You either need to talk to me or fight me. I’m going fucken stir crazy on this road trip.” Sweeney punctuated his words with grunts and hisses. He slammed his drink onto the bar in frustration. The more he drank the more pliable Sweeney was to conversation. Sweeney talked like he fought, erratic and with passion and little thought in the choice of action.

 

“What do you want Sweeney?” Shadow sighed whilst running his fingers atop of the beermat. He felt the bedlam creeping in.

 

He jumped down from his bar stool to head to the bathroom, swiping the beermat into his pocket as he went. 

 

“C’mon talk to me, I thought we’d been building something special on this road trip” Sweeney sneered.

 

Shadow didn’t have time for the Leprechaun's sarcasm, he pressed on despite Sweeney’s objections. Sweeney grabbed his wrist. Even sat down, Sweeney’s eyes met Shadow’s. The sound of the bar and the sound of the Velvet Underground's Loaded album drowned out slowly and Shadow began to lose his cool.

 

“Couldn’t get ya dead wife to shut up, can’t get you to start” Sweeney scoffed through gritted teeth “Don’t make me punch that pretty face a’ yours again”. Sweeney grinned manically. 

 

Shadow didn’t know if this was a threat or a vague attempt at flirting. He yanked his hand away from Sweeney's grip. 

 

Sweeney barked in protest and grabbed Shadow’s head, thrusting a sharp head butt. Shadow looked at Sweeney through drips of blood collecting on his eyelashes.

 

“Looks like I got ya attention, you little shite” Sweeney hollered, a deep split between his eyes. 

 

Shadow stepped backwards, dizzy and angry. Sweeney pulled his grimey vest off and wiped away the blood around his eyes. Sweeney's chest was broad and strong, covered with a spattering of freckles and ancient looking tattoos. 

 

“Outside!” The barmaid barked from behind the bar.

 

Shadow stormed out of the bar, bundling his jacket under his arm and throwing the last of his drink down his throat.

 

“Alright alright! Tetchy bastard” Sweeney chuckled, throwing the bloody vest and his leather jacket over his shoulder.

 

“What the fuck is wrong with you, you Irish prick!?” Shadow yelled whilst sliding down the slide of a shallow embankment. 

 

“Not one for unconventional flirting are ya Shadow Moon?!” Sweeney barked after him. His long strides caught him up with Shadow quicker than shadow would have liked.

 

Shadow dropped his jacket and swung towards Sweeney. Who caught Shadow’s hurtling fist in his large palm. He kicked Sweeney’s knees. His weight dropped from under him, he landed on the embankment with a heavy thud. Shadow straddled the large half clothed Irishman, throwing fists in the vague direction of his face. After a few blows Sweeney grabbed his fists and Shadow sunk, defeated and drained, His hands captured in the giant’s vice like hands. Their eyes locked momentarily, for once Sweeney's eyes looked soft and willing rather than half crazed through the blood. Sweeney pushed Shadow off him like he was no weight at all. Shadow shifted a foot away from the blood soaked leprechaun.

 

Sweeney began to smoke the cigarette behind his ear, surprisingly untouched  by blood. Sweeney offered him a drag of his sagging cigarette to Shadow, he declined politely.

 

“Now ya got ya attention on me  I can tell you to stop being a fucken pussy”

 

Shadow’s brow furrowed and he snarled sternly, “My wife died.”

 

Sweeney shrugged  and tucked his leather jacket under his behind, the cigarette hanging limply from between his teeth.

 

“Look we tried fighten’ and that did nothin’ for ya. You looked like you were about to burst into tears just then. luckily for you when I’m drunk I’m good for talkin’” Sweeney said, resting his knuckle on his knee.

 

“Fine” Shadow rolled his eyes, he couldn’t think of another way of spending a lonely night in a strange town off a highway in Wisconsin.

 

“I’ve fucked a lot people over my years. You’d be surprised at how many people want a go at this.” Sweeney chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe some of what I’ve had a go at”. He looked wistfully off into the night.

 

“Where are you going with this?” Shadow moaned.

 

Sweeney held up his hands in submission.

“Shadow, I’ve fucked, loved and lost a lot of people. I know I’ve lived 200 lifetimes but even for one lifetime you see the people that love ya disappear.” Sweeney’s voice grew solemn.

 

Shadow let out a murmur in a surprised tone.

 

“Why are you so surprised, I’ve got a dick and eyes and I’ve met people who aren’t total cunts before” Sweeney’s voice went from solemn to aggressive with the flick of Shadows utterance.

 

“So, who was your Laura?” Shadow asked assertively.  

 

Sweeney responded to his forcefulness, he seemed to respect it.

 

“I’ve had many Lauras, I can't remember most of their names though. It's been hundreds of years and I’m a leprechaun not a fuken savant” Sweeney chuckled but it seemed more like a defence against feeling something deeper.

 

“There was one girl,” Sweeney smiled fondly, his lips broadening over his teeth, “Annie, she was tall with this dark hair and eyes like oil slicks. She had these powerful thighs, those  _ thighs  _ man. She looked like an amazon but had the heart o’ gold, wouldn’t hurt a fly. We met in New York in the 60’s, I even followed her to England. She first cut my hair like this!”

 

Shadow was taken aback by the thoughtfulness of Sweeney’s story.

 

“We stayed in this fucken canal boat in London, she’d wonder around in these stupid fucken hippy pants and no shirt and bring me coffee in the mornin. We’d have sex, I’d run my fingers over her freckles and shitty tattoos.”

Sweeney said thoughtfully.

 

“Then she introduced me to her husband. A sexy fucker just like her, built like a brick shithouse, just like you. We lived happily together for a while, in that stupid fucken canal boat. He’d look after the plants on the bow, she’d cook dinner and I’d try not to bang me head every time I fecken moved.” He found a serendipitous serene moment in a story bathed in melancholy.

 

“I know what you’re thinkin, of course I’ve been with men. You don’t go through a thousand years a livin without suckin’ a few dicks.” Sweeney said confidently. He passed the large hipflask over to Shadow. Shadow moved closer after taking a swig, to hear Sweeney’s story better.

 

Shadow couldn’t say he hadn’t thought about men in that way, he’d just never got the opportunity. Or at least he’d never got the opportunity that he wanted to take.

 

“Anyway, we had great fucken sex and we listened to music and I told em stories of the old world. I didn’t last long though. They wanted to live their lives. So one day I left in the night grabbing most of my stuff”

 

Shadow passed the flask back and Sweeney took a deep sigh.

 

“Then I read in the paper they’d died in a fire the night I left. A fucken fire on that fucken canal boat. I’d left a burnin’ cigarette on the bow as I left. I spent the rest of the 60’s drinkin’ and hating myself but I got over it, you meet other people and you kinda get over the past. I was a big part a’ their lives and they were a bit part a’ mine but mankind is fragile” Sweeney groaned.

 

Shadow realised that Sweeney was doing the best he could. He caught flashes of his humanity in the pain of his voice. Sweeney’s hatred and bitterness of the world seemed more obvious now. He’d loved and lost too many times to count. He’d figured Sweeney had enough of the painful cycle.

 

“You’ll get over dead wife, like I got over those two and the hundreds before them. You’ve gotta embrace the chaos otherwise the chaos will eat ya whole. It’ll make you feel a little less closer to dead too.” Sweeney mumbled whilst rolling another cigarette.

 

“Thanks Sweeney. It does kinda help” Shadow wiped the blood from his still dripping nose with the beermat still in his pocket. The tainted smiley face stared back at him, covered in blood. Life was short, messy and could end at any moment.

 

“Embrace the chaos, don’t let it consume me” Shadow muttered.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The two giant men sat in silence against the bank, the smell of iron still in the air. The dynamic between them had changed, there was a mutual understanding of pain.

 

“There’s an easier way to get over someone, find someone else to fuck. Better if it’s someone who didn’t look like a corpse before they died like your dead wife”

 

Shadow balled his fists and stood up and loomed over Sweeney.

 

“After all that, still tetchy eh?”

Shadow puffed air into his chest, his emotions running wild, loosened by the alcohol.

 

“You ready for round two then big lad?” Sweeney snarled. His eyes flaring wild, his scarred face lit up by the one lowly street light.

Sweeney leaned forward, his long arms pulling Shadow so close that their noses almost touched.

 

_ Embrace chaos  _ , the words lingered in Shadow’s head.

 

They stared intently at one another as they had done many times before. Sweeney’s intense and erratic company meant they’d spent a long time at a close distance. Shadow knew every crease of Sweeney’s historic face and the scars on his forehead and cheeks, and the stories behind them. His hazel eyes were wild and feverous as they always were, but this time the desperation in them was different, it was deeper and more primal than ever before.

 

“You want me to fuck someone like you?” Shadow asked hesitantly

 

“Of course you fucken moron” Sweeney snarled, Shadow could taste the cheap whiskey and cigarettes on his breath.

 

Sweeney crashed his lips into Shadow’s. The kiss was frantic and cathartic, it tasted like blood and the desperate need to connect with another body. It was something they’d both needed since endeavouring on Wednesday’s errands. It had been more obvious to Sweeney than it had been to Shadow. It became glaringly transparent after Sweeney's monologue about loss and redemption.

 

Sweeney pulled away from Shadow, who’s hand was tangled in Sweeney’s red mohawk.

 

“C’mon lad, I’m insane but not fuck in a field infront of a bar full of people insane.”


End file.
